The Principle and Pattern of Submission — Part Two

I invite you to take your Bibles, and we’ll turn once again to 1 Peter—1 Peter chapter 2. And the focus of our study over this last Sunday and this morning begins at 2:11 and goes through to 2:25.

Some of the challenges contained in this section are as follows: How do you render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s while at the same time making sure that you render to God the things that are God’s?[1] What does it mean to be in the world and yet at the same time not of the world? Question: Does it not fall to the believer, of all people, to display to an increasingly secular age just what it means to be one nation under God? Every day at school, I believe, our children say that phrase: “one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.” I’ve learned it vicariously through them. And I wonder: Does it not fall to us as Christians, of all people, to be able to say, “This is what this phrase means—to live ‘under God.’”

These, then, are some of the challenges which we began to tackle a little in the last two weeks and to which we return this morning, studying this under the broad heading of this whole “Pattern and Principle of Submission.” This week, as I tried to trace my way through these verses, coming to them afresh—because last Sunday was sort of different, and I took all the material of last Sunday that was supposed to be spoken and laid it on one side and started again—I drew on my page three seesaws, or, as you call them, teeter-totters. And since you have a blank page, you might like to draw some “teeder-todders” right there for yourselves. It doesn’t sound the same, saying “teeter-totters,” does it?

Anyway, I drew them on the page for this reason: that I discovered that it’s not difficult to argue that there are three fulcrums in this section beginning at the thirteenth verse. The first fulcrum comes in verse 15, and I drew a little fulcrum, and then I drew the seesaw on either side of it, with verse 15 in the middle, balancing on the left-hand side of my page verses 13 and 14 and on the right-hand side of my page balancing verses 16 and 17. And then I drew another one a little bit further down, with verse 19 as the pivot and verse 18 balancing on the left and verse 20 balancing on the right. And then I drew a third one with the with the second half of verse 24 as the pivot, with verses 21–23 balancing on the left and, obviously, verse 25 balancing on the right. Now, I found those diagrams helpful, just because it focused for me a way of going at these verses. And I want to use them in that way this morning in trying to come to grips with what this means for us as we live our lives in this twentieth century.

Muzzling Ignorant Men

First, then, we’re going to use the fifteenth verse as the key, or the pivot, around which we gather the instruction of the surrounding verses, 13–17. The fifteenth verse reads, “For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish men.” “For it is God’s will that … you should [be able to] silence the ignorant talk of foolish men,” and that “by doing good.” This is the little explanation statement which gives the credence to that which he has surrounding it in terms of application.

Who are these “foolish men” to whom Peter refers? Well, he uses “men” generically. It might equally read “foolish men and women.” And these individuals are those who run Christianity down without either reason or knowledge—people in his day who were saying things that despised Christianity, and it wasn’t simply that they lacked information, but it was that they were culpably ignorant; that they were, if you like, willfully disobedient to the truth; that they chose to ignore the clear instruction which had been provided for them in the apostolic teaching. And the existence of foolish men and women is as clear today, in our generation, as it ever was then—hence the timeliness of the instruction. “There are foolish people out there,” says Peter, “who run Christianity down day in and day out. And they do so on the basis of a culpable ignorance.” How, then, are we to respond to them? What should we do with them?

And the answer that he gives is very graphic. He says that we should gag them, or that we should muzzle them. That is actually the word that is used here, phimoō, which means to muzzle a dog or an animal. And some of us might waken up to that notion. There’s a few folks that we’ve been rubbing shoulders with in the last days that we would be quite interested to take a dog’s muzzle and put it on them, if we were perfectly honest. However, while that is the picture, that is not the process. For he tells us that the muzzling, or the gagging, is going to take place, in one phrase there, “by doing good.” So how do you put a muzzle on foolish men and women who continually run down Christianity? What is the divine strategy for it? And the answer is in three simple words: “By doing good.” That is how, he says, we will effectively silence such ignorant talk. That’s the principle: “There are foolish people out there. They have ignorant talk. You need to muzzle them. And the way you’re going to muzzle them is by doing good.”

Well then, how does that work itself out? What are the practicalities concerning that? What does it mean when I go into my office or when I go back to school or as I drive in my car? Well, Peter gives the answer to that in the surrounding verses.

Verse 13: the first way in which we’re going to do good and so silence foolish talk is by being good subjects. By being good subjects. That’s what he’s saying in verse 13. The believer is to be a good citizen.

How do you put a muzzle on foolish men and women who continually run down Christianity? What is the divine strategy for it? The answer is three simple words: ‘By doing good.’

Consider with me—and turn to it if you would—1 Timothy 2:1–2. Paul writing to Timothy, giving Timothy instructions as to what Timothy should say as a pastor of a church and how he should guide his congregation: Paul says to Timothy, “This is what I want you to do.” “I urge, then, first of all”—right off the bat—“that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone.” In other words, he says, “I want you to make sure that your congregation prays, Timothy.” Prayers should be made for everyone, and then in verse 2, “for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.”

And what Paul is saying here is the exact same thing that Peter is expressing—namely, that the institution of civil government, established by God, needs to be upheld by the citizenry. And if Christians are going to be good citizens, then they must uphold the institution of civil jurisdiction, recognizing that God established it for the well-being of human society. That society is to be ordered under God is perfectly clear, as he goes on to say in verse 14. He has established it so that people who do well should get applause and people who do badly should be punished.

In other words, there exists in Scripture no place for anarchy. No place for anarchy. There is no place for a Christian anarchic movement. So it is imperative that those of us who know and love Christ and want to obey his Word and follow after him will uphold the structure of civil government—now, notice what I’m about to say—even though it might not institute Christian values. It’s very important. There is a prevailing notion around today that we are only called upon to uphold civil government as long as it does what we like as Christians. God says, “No. You are to uphold civil government because I instituted it for the well-being of society, even given the fact that it does not institute Christian values.” Think about it, loved ones: there is no way that Peter could ever give this instruction in his day and generation with Nero as the emperor and with the foul, evil oppression of the Roman government if this were not the case. Otherwise, he would have written what was a diatribe against the government and jurisdiction of his day.

Now, I know that many of you are concerned about this—I’ve spoken with some and heard of others—because immediately the question arises: “Well, aren’t there exceptions? Doesn’t the Bible give to us exceptions?” And the answer is yes. So let me identify them for you, and in a question-and-answer time we can rap about this. But I can’t develop it this morning. There are exceptions, and this is when they come: when the state—in the Old Testament and in the New—when the state violated or violates a direct command of God that would force a Christian to choose between his allegiance to God and his allegiance to Caesar. In other words, when the state actually says something… For example, let me give you some of the illustrations.

Exodus chapter 1—read it at home—the story of the Israelite midwives: “Kill your children.” “No.” Now, what was the command that was given? It was not that the government gave an option to the midwives if they chose to kill their children; it was that they gave a mandate to them saying, “Do this,” and they said, “We cannot do that. It would violate God’s law.”

Secondly, in Daniel chapter 3: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and all the monkey business that was involved there—a tremendously exciting story. But again, the principle is clear. The state said, “This is what you’re going to do.” Directly: “You as individuals, this is what you must do.” And they say, “We can’t do that, because God said that.”

Thirdly, Daniel chapter 6: Daniel and prayer. The state said, “You’re not praying, even in your own house.” And Daniel, in his own house, went, opened the windows, and prayed, because he recognized that the state could not tell him that he could not speak to his heavenly Father. But it was a direct mandate to which he had to respond personally. The state contravened, intervened.

Fourthly, Acts chapter [4], in the apostles’ preaching. They said, “You cannot personally preach anymore.”[2] And they said, “Sorry, you’ve got it wrong. Judge whether it is right in your sight for us to obey God or to obey men.”[3]

Now, I hope you’ve paid careful attention to that, because I want you to notice this—and this is a distinction that I find hard to communicate, and it is obviously difficult to understand. In each of these cases—and these are the key cases in the Bible—notice that the believer was called upon personally to make a choice between a governmental decree involving him or her and God’s law. It is for that reason that modern-day Nazi Germany fits the pattern: because it is akin to the situation described in Exodus 2:2, which I referred to before, whereby the state was actually saying, “These people must die, and we ourselves will kill them. And we want you to enable us to do so.” And the believers in Nazi Germany—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, etc.—said, “No, we cannot do that.” But it was not that the state, in its negligence, allowed laws to be passed which these people didn’t actually appreciate and think were very good, and so they went out and broke good laws to protest bad laws.

So, loved ones, we will never get our heads around this until we realize that it is the purpose of God, it is the plain instruction of Scripture, that as believers, we are called upon to uphold the structure of civil government, even though it may not institute Christian values. That’s all I’m going to say on it.

Let’s go to the other side of the teeter-totter, to verse 16: “Live as free men.” And how our hearts warm to that! “Oh, this is good now! Now we’re getting on to the good stuff. ‘Live as free men’! That’s good. I like that.”

“Take your feet off the seat.” “Why should I? It’s a free country.” Bam! Suddenly, the person realizes there is a higher law which controls the law of freedom, which is within the parameters. Why? Because the freedom that the believer enjoys is conditioned upon the fact of his responsibility to God. Freedom doesn’t exist in a vacuum. And that’s why he immediately says, “Live as free men”—super!—“but [make sure that you] do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil.” And again, the principle: “Live as servants of God.” In other words, so understand what it means to be under God’s all-seeing eye and under his authority that all your activities in civil government, in personal daily routine, will ultimately be monitored not by the fact that I have a king, or I have an emperor, or I have a president, or I have a boss or a master, but I have a God! And under God, who instituted these things, I must live in a certain way. That’s why I am different from anyone else. That’s why the Reformers paid so much time and attention to wrestling with this whole question of what it meant to be under God’s headship and what it meant to live as children of the state.

What does it mean, then, for our freedom to be conditioned by our responsibility? How are servants of God to function? Verse 17 answers that question. First of all, they “show proper respect,” or honor, “to everyone.” All right? Now this, you see, is where the whole question comes in, for example, in the believers trying to work out their salvation with fear and trembling[4] in Southern Africa. How in the world can I pontificate on Southern Africa? I’ve never even been there. I only know what I read in the paper. But I can imagine what a struggle it must be for the believers in the southern tip of Africa to apply this clear mandate as servants of God. Check it out: Are you showing proper respect to everyone?

Our society is geared to not showing proper respect to everyone. Our society is geared to showing proper respect to who you have to show proper respect to in order to get what you want when you want in the right time frame. And our children grow up learning in the structures who you need to be deferential to, etc. What the Bible says is, “No!” It cuts the rug from that. It says, “You’re a Christian believer. You’re a servant of God. You cannot stand back from anyone. You must recognize that all creatures were made in God’s image. Therefore, they are worthy of honor and respect. Therefore, all must be honored and respected.”

That’s why the second verse of “Jesus Loves the Little Children” is so helpful, isn’t it?

Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in his sight;
Jesus loves the little children of the world.[5]

This phrase says no to racial discrimination. This phrase says no to elitism. This says no to bureaucracy whereby those who are somewhere less than they hoped to be within the structure of society somehow cannot get anyone to listen to them at all, and they wonder if there is anyone who honors them. Well, the believer should be out honoring all men: the person who takes your ticket on the Rapid, the person who speaks to you at the train station, the lady who gives you the Pepsi-Cola if you happen to fly on the plane. There is to be a respect which comes for all men. That’s how the servants of God live.

It is the purpose of God, it is the plain instruction of Scripture, that as believers, we are called upon to uphold the structure of civil government, even though it may not institute Christian values.

Secondly, they show love to those who are in the Christian community. There is to be proper respect for everyone, and there is to be agape love within the brotherhood of believers. So there’s no cold shoulder allowed. There’s no slipping by on the other side. There’s no running up the left-hand aisle because Mary’s on the right-hand aisle. It just can’t be there—not if we would live as servants of God. And the agape love is not some mushy, slushy, junky stuff. It rather is loyalty; it’s truthfulness; it’s commitment through good times and through bad times. And thirdly, there is to be reverential fear or awe shown to God, and there is to be honor displayed to the king.

So, the principle is in verse 15: silencing ignorant talk of foolish men by doing good. The practice is in being good citizens. What are good citizens? Good citizens are informed citizens. They know what’s going on. How can you ever say you’re a good citizen and you don’t know what’s happening around you? How can I ever say that? We have a responsibility to be informed. Good citizens are involved! We have a responsibility for involvement. And good citizens are interceding. We are taking the cause and the burden of prayer seriously before God.

Now, you may say, “Well, I thought last week you were saying something different.” No, let me try and explain to you that last week, what I was addressing was the issue of the church’s shift in dependence, which, I’m suggesting to you, subtly is shifting from the strategy which God gives for the church to a strategy which is created by man. And all that I said from Scripture I stand with. But I was not addressing the issue, nor negating the place, of individual involvement as citizens in our society. Of course, if we are uninvolved, how can we ever be salt and light in our community?

I take that as an amen. All right, let’s go to the... I’ll take ’em any way I can get ’em.

Enduring Unjust Suffering

Let’s go to the second seesaw here: verse 19, and quickly. Here’s the pivot. Notice it begins in the exact same way: “For it is…” “For it is…” He’s giving an explanation of why he’s saying what he’s saying. He says, “For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering.” In other words, why would Dietrich Bonhoeffer be a hero except for this verse, 1 Peter 2:19? “The pain of unjust suffering.” Phillips’s paraphrase: “A man does something valuable when he endures pain, as in the sight of God, though he knows he is suffering unjustly.” Well, we don’t really need to beat that to death. That’s straightforward. You get a hiding you didn’t deserve—as a Christian, because of your Christian convictions—and Peter says, “You done good, boy. You did good.”

Now, how does that work itself out? Well, that’s where verse 18 comes in: “Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters.” And what Peter is doing here is he is moving slowly through the institutions of life that God has ordained. He has started with civil government, which was right there from the beginning of time, and he is now moving in, if you like, to the workaday place. And at the beginning of chapter 3, and right in time for Mother’s Day next Sunday, he moves into the home and to the place of wives in the principle of submission.

Now, we need to understand here that the reference is to the framework of employment, and particularly within a household. The word that he uses, incidentally, for “slaves” is the word oiketēs, which might be translated “domestic help.” He does not use the more normal word douloi—or doulos, individual—from which we get the slavery word. Now, that doesn’t limit the fact of their condition, but we need to bear in mind that when we read this, these individuals included many who today would be regarded as professionals in our congregation. We ought not to read this and think of people in terms of 1935 and the Southern States of America. Rather, you need to read this and realize that these individuals being addressed were managers of estates—of large companies. Some of them were physicians, doctors. Many of them were teachers, and many of them were private tutors. In other words, he is addressing individuals who, by and large, in many cases, were well educated and held responsible positions.

Having said all of that, they were still directly under the mastership of someone that they may not particularly have liked nor that they may have wished to serve. And in that respect, they’re not a lot different from many of us going back to our work on a Monday. For how many of you get up on a Monday morning and say, “Oh, terrific! I get to see old Bill this morning! Good old smiling Bill will be waiting for me. How glad I am that he’ll be there! And beyond Bill, there will be Fred. And Fred will be beyond... And finally, I can worship at the great pyramidical structure.” No, by and large, we don’t get up that way. At least, if you do, that’s… You probably should talk with someone a little, but… All I’m saying is this isn’t so far removed from reality. We might not regard ourselves as slaves, right? “Don’t tell me I’m a slave. This is America, you know.” But, hey, guys, I see you on the Rapid, and I see you going with those big briefcases and stuff. We’re all, to a certain degree, within some kind of jurisdiction that isn’t ideal or perfect.

Now, the issue here is not social stability. That’s not what Peter is addressing. He’s not addressing… He’s not giving principles here for the perpetuation of slavery, which some have sought to teach out of this. What he is giving instruction about here is about what happens when a believer is on the receiving end of unjust criticism and cruel treatment. That’s what he’s talking about. You’re a believer, and you’re a slave in a home. You may be a doctor, you may be a tutor, you may be a manager of a four-hundred-and-fifty-acre estate, but your boss isn’t treating you real well. “Let me tell you what to do,” says Peter. You may have a good boss, of course. He says some of them are “good and considerate,” verse 18. Some are “harsh”—the word is skoliois, which actually means “perverse”—and seem to take a strange delight in changing their plans on us and asking us difficult questions and just making life a general disaster. So what do you do?

Well, he says, irrespective of the category into which your boss or your master falls—whether you got a good and considerate one or whether you have a perverse one—you have a golden opportunity to display submission to God. And the way you will display submission to God, says Peter, is by treating your master, your boss, or your manager “with all respect.” “With all respect.” That’s in verse 18. “Submit yourselves to your masters with all respect.” Not with a slavish fear, not with a stiff-necked reluctance, but with a genuine submission to God. “For,” he says, “there’s no credit if you get a good hiding which you deserved.” If you deserve to get a good smacking, you can’t go out and say, “My, oh my! Well, didn’t I do well? I got a smacking, and I didn’t cry.” No, he says, “How is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it?” There’s nothing special about that. “But,” he says, “if you endure suffering for doing good, then this is commendable before God.”

Let me illustrate this from the words of Jesus—Luke chapter 6. The principle is essentially the same. Luke 6:32: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?” If you speak to people in your office who speak to you, don’t drive home in your car saying, “What a great guy I am! I spoke to those people.” The real test is if you speak to people who don’t want to speak to you. Because, he says, “even ‘sinners’ love those who love them.” Sinners are happy to hang out with the gang. Verse 33: “And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that …? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full.”

Now, the disciples’ eyes must have been like this—saucers—’cause they know he’s going to hit them with a heavy-duty statement. It’s coming out of his lips next. We can read ahead, so it doesn’t have the same effect, but they’re listening. “You do this. You do this.” “Hey, what’s the big deal?” They must have said, “What’s he going to say now?” Listen to what he says: “But love your enemies. Love people who hate you. Do good to them. Lend to them, and don’t expect them even to pay you back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High.”[6] In other words, you will display the family likeness, because your Father is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked.[7] And when you think about it, we know that’s true, right? Why? Because we are ungrateful, and we are wicked. And God was kind to us and redeemed us in the blood of his Son,[8] and yet we go out and remain unkind and wicked to other people, saying, “I don’t see why I need to treat them that way.” And Peter pulls the rug out from underneath the carpet, and he did so because he listened carefully to what Jesus was saying.

Let me give you an illustration of this:

“And I thank God that he has given me the love to seek to convert and to adopt as my son the enemy who killed my dear boys.” These were the words of Korean Pastor Yang-won Son. The year was 1948; the place was the town of Soon-chun, near the 38th parallel. A band of Communists had taken control of the town for a brief period, and had executed Pastor Son’s two older boys, Matthew and John. They died as martyrs, calling on their persecutors to a faith in Jesus. When the Communists were driven out, Chai-sun, a young man of the village, was identified as one who had fired the murderous shots. His execution was ordered. Pastor Son requested that the charges be dropped and that Chai-sun be released into his custody for adoption. Rachel, the thirteen-year-old sister of the murdered boys, testified to support her father’s incredible request. Only then did the court agree to release Chai-sun. He became the son of the pastor, and a believer in the grace of [our Lord] Jesus Christ.[9]

You can get the book; it’s an InterVarsity book. So, your two boys are murdered by the bullets from the gun of a guy that you adopt into your home and treat him as your own, and he discovers the love and the forgiveness and the power of Jesus Christ. It is exactly this to which Peter refers.

And then he comes in the twenty-first verse, and he provides the ultimate example. I’m going to leave this till next time so that we’re able to share Communion together without any rush. Because there is a very real sense in which, if you will keep your Bibles open at 1 Peter 2:21 as we share Communion together now, what we do in symbol is described for us in actuality in these verses and is a reminder to us of the whole dimension of Christian living which the world regards as foolishness and which the Bible says is the power of God unto salvation.[10]

Let’s pause for a moment in prayer:

Father, we ask that you will bless and enable us now, as we break bread together, that these challenging words from your Word concerning what it means to live out the life of Christ may take root in our hearts. Grant, Lord, that we may not eat and drink flippantly or foolishly but genuinely and humbly, seeking after you. For we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

[1] See Matthew 22:21; Mark 12:17; Luke 20:25.

[2] See Acts 4:18.

[3] Acts 4:19 (paraphrased).

[4] See Philippians 2:12.

[5] C. H. Woolston, “Jesus Loves the Little Children” (1976).

[6] Luke 6:35 (paraphrased).

[7] See Matthew 5:43–48; Luke 6:36.

[8] See Romans 5:8.

[9] Edmund Clowney, The Message of 1 Peter: The Way of the Cross, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1988), 113–14.

[10] See 1 Corinthians 1:22–25.